


Fox On the Run

by Queen_of_Moons67



Category: Warriors - Erin Hunter
Genre: Alternate Universe, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Minor Character Death, everyone else is still a cat, firestar is still rusty, rusty is a fox, this is totally going to end well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:13:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26164690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queen_of_Moons67/pseuds/Queen_of_Moons67
Summary: Also known as "Bluestar's Future Heart Attack."Bluestar wasn't expecting to stumble across a fox kit in the heart of ThunderClan.Rusty just wanted his mother.
Relationships: Bluefur & Firestar (Warriors)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 85





	Fox On the Run

Rusty ran from the other fox as fast as his still short legs could carry him, heart thundering so hard he feared it might burst out of his chest—but he couldn’t help it.

Not with his mother gone.

She went hunting a quarter moon before and never returned, leaving Rusty to creep only from their den to the river and back again, until the hunger gnawing away and cramping in his stomach finally became too much. He’d had to eat. He’d _had to_ , but before he could take a single bite out of the mouse he caught, the other fox had appeared, barking about how the territory was taken.

Rusty hadn’t been able to resist running anymore than he’d been able to resist his own hunger. The other fox was huge, at least three times the size of Rusty himself, and barking and shrieking so much Rusty was afraid other predators would be called right to them—

Rusty rounded a bush and bounced back, nose smarting with the smell of—

His mother?

It was her scent, but it was fading, overtaken by blood and something rotting.

Like she was something rotting.

Her body lay before him, but it was cold, and she didn’t move at all when he nudged her.

There were bite marks in her throat.

“Mother?” Rusty tried, nosing around the wound. “Mother?”

Silence—and then the forest filled with sound again, though it didn’t come from his mother. It was around him, something crashing through the undergrowth, until finally a gray kitten a little smaller than himself burst into the open.

“Cat!” he yelped, staring at it, and the kitten yelped, too.

For a moment, they just stared at each other, the fur on their backs they’d both instinctually raised slowly settling back again. Then the kitten meowed something, and Rusty frowned, nervously scuffing a paw in the dirt.

“Do you speak fox?” he asked slowly, though he knew the answer even before the kitten’s fur fluffed right back up again. What kind of cat spoke fox?

Taking a step back, Rusty braced himself against his mother’s flank, muscles tense. He didn’t want to run, didn’t want to just leave his mother there—but then the wind shifted, blowing the scent of a she-cat and a tom right at him.

Rusty shrieked in fear, finally turning and running. He should have known better. Of course the kitten wasn’t alone, Rusty was going to die, the adult cats would murder him, why was his mother sleeping, he wanted his mother, he would take the strange fox coming back over these cats—

Rusty slammed into a cat and bounced back.

This one wasn’t a kitten, though.

Rusty looked up, and up, and locked in on the imperial gaze of the full-grown she-cat looking back at him. She wasn’t as big as Rusty’s mother.

Rusty also knew that didn’t matter. Not when she was still twice the size of Rusty himself, and not when he could hear the kitten and the tom coming up behind him. Not when he could see the claw marks of a full-grown fox in her fur, about a quarter moon old. This was a she-cat who could and had taken care of foxes before.

Flattening himself to the ground, Rusty curled his tail around himself and tucked his ears back, trying to appear as small as possible.

“I’m just going,” he yipped nervously. “I’ll never bother you again.”

The she-cat tipped her head to the side and meowed something, and the kitten meowed back, gesturing at Rusty’s mother. The she-cat tensed, then softened—but she still looked upset.

Rusty shivered and curled his tail tighter. Should he make a run for it? _Could_ he make a run for it? Cats... cats didn’t eat foxes, right? Foxes ate cats, he knew that, but—but did that still apply if one of them was a fox cub and the other was a full-grown cat?

A cool nose brushed his ear, and Rusty jumped, yipping, but that just made the she-cat come even _closer_ , tucking her head down beside his own and—and licking his cheek?

Rusty froze, side-eying her as much as he could. She gave him another lick, and her tail brushed around his body, coaxing him closer to herself. He couldn’t bring himself to move, muscles too frozen to obey, but he didn’t move away, either.

Behind him, the tom mewed something, voice deep but low. He... didn’t sound threatening? And the she-cat replied evenly enough, and then stepped back.

She didn’t take her eyes off Rusty, though, and he stayed where he was even as his eyes followed her in return.

She meowed, and laid her tail across his shoulders. Fur brushed his flank, and he finally looked away from the she-cat to see the tom stepping up beside him, tail laying over his shoulders and the she-cat’s tail while the tom nudged his head. The tom was rumbling deep in his chest, too, a noise that Rusty had never heard before but couldn’t help but find comforting.

The she-cat took a step away, then looked back. Her tail didn’t budge from his shoulders.

“I don’t understand,”Rusty said. “You want me to follow you?”

The she-cat rumbled like the tom had, though she still didn’t seem to understand him, and the kitten ran in front of Rusty and bounced on his toes, meowing excitedly.

Rusty glanced between them. They... seemed friendly enough? And Rusty’s mother wasn’t moving, and cats don’t eat foxes. _Cats don’t eat foxes._

Shaking himself, Rusty pushed to his paws and followed the cats. Their tails never slipped from his shoulders, and against every instinct shouting at him, his body slowly relaxed at the first friendly touch he’d felt since his mother left to hunt.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm tagging this as complete, but I do fully expect to write more (my beta won't stop sending me fox videos, guys, it's a problem).
> 
> In the meantime, please let me know what you think in a comment, and/or come bother me on tumblr @queenofmoons67!


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